Tag: tips

Has your Instagram page stopped performing?

Are you just not getting anymore followers, likes or the audience engagement you used to?

Instagram has rapidly moved on from just posting images. Just like every other channel you need to be doing more to really make this one work for your business. You want to connect, engage, sell, promote and make the time you spend on Instagram worth your while and seek maximum ROIs.

Here are few tips on how to improve your Instagram strategy.

Hashtags##

Hashtags – be sure to use them in your posts – By using just around 6-12 you won’t come across as spammy. overload and people will be put off! (you can use up to 30)

it would be useful to see what your competitors are hash tagging and draw some influence

do some tests with 3/7/12 etc and see which posts come out top!

Competitions

Set up a competition or a free giveaway – people are always motivated with freebies! Its a good tactic for you gain more exposure and followers.

Stories

You will have noticed this feature by now as it appears on the top of your insta feed.Fairly new but everyone and brands are using this to their advantage and so much YOU!

This feature allows it users to upload and write over unfiltered pictures and videos that disappear after 24 hours.

HOW TO- Look for the + button on the top right side of your feed, you can also launch stories by swiping right from your main screen. Then tap the circle button on the bottom of the screen to take a new pic or tap and hold to take a video. Then click edit to play about with its fun features.

Tap done to save and the Share!

Use Stories to promote a sale, showcase your services, introduce new team mates, show some personality and push your BRAND!

Profile Links

To get round that you can add a link to your profile description , so this might be for your website, a sign up for a newsletter, or blog.

Mix it up every few days, you can change your bio link at any time and use a call to action to drive traffic to that link.

Banner Images

Keep up with a display image trend that been around for a while but is a good way to present an image a bit differently. If done correctly it can have great results.

Might be good to only keep this tatic on special occasions and not overuse i.e. product launch, announcement.

To create banner images you can use mobile apps such as Giant Square or Banner Pic. These apps allow you to easily upload the photo you wish to post as a grid, divide it up into several segments and upload them to your Instagram gallery.

Instagram Ads

One of the best ways to up your engagement and followers. Here you have to spend a little bit on money to make some money.

Facebook is the parent company of Instagram, so in order to create an Instagram ad, you will need to use the Power Editor feature through Facebook. Here’s a great video on exactly how to set up your Instagram ad.

To create an Instagram ad in Power Editor:

Click the Manage Ads tab at the top of the page.

Click on the left side of the page and then click Create Ad.

On the Create Ad page, choose whether to use an existing campaign or create a new campaign.

Enter a name for the ad and click Create.

Finally,

Reply to your comments

If people comment on your posts, at least provide them with the courtesy of a reply. Otherwise it may look like you just don’t care. It’s can also be a reflection of your brand and customer service.

So, why not try out a few of these tactics and see if your Instagram receives more engagement.

A beginners guide to content scheduling

How to post in advance and set your busy content calendar up for the days, weeks and months ahead.

The Problem.

So, it’s Monday evening and you’ve had a busy day in the office trying to sort out what you have to do next week and the following weeks ahead. The thought of logging in to all your social channels and ‘setting up’ is pretty painful.

How can you plan your content posting tasks so that it doesn’t take up all your week?

The Solution.

Planning content and campaigns is a common element of many marketing strategies, and the ‘content calendar’—in its many shapes and forms—fits this role perfectly.

Sometimes companies can churn out social posts very quickly. Oreo, a company known for their strong Twitter presence, was able to send out this tweet during the 2013 Super Bowl mere moments after the power went out:

What’s the point in a content calendar?

sharable resource that can used across your business

helps you visualise just how busy you are

helps you plan around key dates and events and campaigns

highlights your publishing timelines

planning ahead will result in a better flow of content

4 steps to create a content schedule

identify your topic/product/event/and audience

set a schedule of themes to your day i.e. Monday-News , Tues-Wellness, Wed-Images, and so on..

what content resources do you have? i.e. press cuts, launch photos, staff pics, product images, client stories, social pics from staff etc, reports that can be used as infographic content, extend your resources to include external sources back linking come to mind here!

Schedule, publish, promote, track, and tweak your content

Hold content meetings

Weekly content meetings are a great way to talk about what is being planned for in the next few weeks, just make sure you schedule in the important ones way before the publishing dates. These meetings are also a great opportunity to review content that may have been super successful or not. It’s good to share the bad stories too!

There’s a great chance your post frequency will depend on the amount, experience and authority of your social media team, so don’t feel pressured to meet these guidelines. Do what works best for your business.

Content calendar tools

Allows you to organise your social posts, monitor keywords, search your competitors content and look out for your brand mentions plus lots more.. a free tool that allow you to add up to 3 social accounts. Add more and pay a monthly fee. A great option for small businesses that just want to get used to the concept of pre-scheduling content across various channels. Comes in a mobile app for on the go scheduling.

Hootsuite also comes with a few analytic reporting options so you can see how effective your content is.

Fill in the calendar with links to relevant content, resources and your own posts. These social messages will ensure you’re providing your audiences with smart, useful content and give them a reason to follow you. Additionally, you can find relevant holidays or events–from Thanksgiving to National Ice Cream Day–that you can tie in with your business. In fact, Sprout Social created it’s own hashtag holidays calendar so you can keep track of all the eccentric holidays. These timely events will help populate you calendar and bring personality to your feed.

Basecamp is a project management app, and it can be used effectively from the content creation part of the process all the way through to scheduling. It’s easy to manage multiple projects at once, and even comes with a free trial.

If you want to keep it simple you could always just create a new Google calendar for the process and invite everyone on the team to view it. Those teammates could also add all of their own posts and ideas to the same calendar.

Useful Infographic

Coschedule pulled together a great Infographic on content scheduling along with some posting tips and we love it!

Might be an idea to have this as a visual in your office.

Finding the right schedule technique, calendar and approach will take a bit of time. As your business grows so will your confidence in managing and posting on social media.